Jake Tapper is my new hero
ABC News’ Jake Tapper whips out his pocket calculator and embarrasses the Obama Administration.
The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 — closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as “the waitress who’s still on the job,” Vice President Biden said today.
So let’s see. Assuming their number is right — 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?
Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.”
He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 — but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.
Really? Just $92,000? I feel soooo much better.
Take notes FOX News: If you did journalism like this — with real reporting and not hysterical screaming and spin — you might be a respected news source for people other than tea baggers, birthers and truthers.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
REAL news media would be pressuring the powers-that-be for meaningful trade laws to create and protect American jobs … but don’t look for that anytime soon. They just continue to spout the corporate nonsense about global trade as if the Phoenicians weren’t doing it thousands of years ago. Global trade isn’t new … and which companies are sucking up all this cash to “create” jobs? The same companies that offshored the jobs in first place. Jake is no more a journalist than are the wingnuts at Fox.
“Create and protect American jobs”, well that sounds perfectly patriotic except that what Michael means is that he’s pissed that being part of a union doesn’t offer the same protection that it used to and now those jobs are being sent overseas to foreigners who can do them as well and for less than he can. America’s strength in the global economy has never been about union jobs, it has been about innovation and ideas. Which you can’t outsource over seas.
And if you think I am full of BS, which I am sure you do, how would you propose you keep those jobs in the US and please be more specific than “end free trade agreements” because that doesn’t explain anything.
First … I never mentioned anything about unions. I said what I meant and I didn’t say anything about being pissed about union protections. It is quite simple, return to the tariff laws that added import tariffs to foreign products to keep them from flooding our markets. Second, add those same tariffs to foreign made parts imported to produce American products. Third, start enforcing anti-trust and monopoly laws so entrepreneurs can enter the markets vacated by the conglomerates who refuse to stop off-shoring jobs. It’s not rocket science folks, we did it for decades. Finally, ONLY give jobs creation money to those companies who agree to stop using that money to develop expertise only to export the jobs shortly after they cash the check. It is past time we started expecting companies to act like a part of the community they exist in instead of simply middlemen who soak up our corporate welfare, infrastructure and protections and then offshore our jobs. We can not survive as a nation without producing something to create the jobs … we simply can’t all survive selling each other stuff manufactured somewhere else.
No, we can’t survive without ideas which lead to products.
Bill, how about pMSNBC? Do they do real journalism “with real reporting and not hysterical screaming and spin”?
I watch MSNBC so rarely, I cannot judge. Their rep is that of of somewhat less obvious pro-Democrat version fo Fox news. But do they product jacked up outrage stories the way FOX ddoes? I dunno.
Bill, I watch MSNBC about as often as I watch Fox or CNN. I catch Matthews, Maddow and Olberman. As much as a Hannity or Beck is blasting Obama, ACORN and Pelosi, you equally have Matthews, Maddow and Olberman dissing the RNC, the chick ex-gov from Alaska and, still, W. Bush. I don’t trust a thing anyone of these jerks from either side has to say. And there’s good reason. You can’t trust them. Both Fox and MSNBC are like an insurance salesman trying to sell an annuity to a 80 year old cripple.
In other words, it sounds good, if you want to hear it, but it probably isn’t right.
That would be Jake Tapper. It displays his name under his picture.